Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners does not go that route. It opens with a shot of a snowy forest, where a deer quietly noses around for food. Into the frame comes the barrel of a shotgun.
Just so, semantic theories and foundational theories of meaning are, pretty clearly, different sorts of theories. The term âtheory of meaningâ has, in the recent history of philosophy, been used to stand for both semantic theories and foundational theories of meaning.
Semantics (from Ancient Greek: ÏÎ·Î¼Î±Î½ÏÎ¹ÎºÏÏ sÄmantikos, significant) is primarily the linguistic, and also philosophical, study of meaningâin language, programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics. It focuses on the relationship between signifiersâlike words, phrases, signs, and symbolsâand what they stand for, their denotation.